Karen Sandler

Category: Old Memories

  • RIP Ray Bradbury

    I think I read Ray Bradbury for the first time in the summer of 1970. I’d had just moved to L.A. to live with my dad. I can’t remember how came across that first book of short stories, or even what the first book was. I just know that after that I read every Ray Bradbury book I could get my hands on.

    I’ve been reading various obits and have come to realize that the stories in those books I read in the ’70s had been written decades before. Yet to me, they seemed timeless, just as immediate as if they’d been written exactly for me. I also thought I’d read just about everything Bradbury had written, but a scan of his bibliography tells me I had a long way to go.

    Of his novels, I’ve read Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes (and wrote a poem using that marvelous title). Of his short story collections, I’ve read The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, Dark Carnival, The Illustrated Man, The October Country, R is for Rocket and S is for Space. Maybe some others that I’m not remembering. I tried looking for the books on our overflowing bookshelves, but with time I think those original paperbacks have pretty much distintegrated.

    The thing about reading Bradbury’s stories is that it seemed as if he was describing exactly my childhood. I didn’t grow up in a small town in Illinois (heck, I was raised in Los Angeles). But he managed to capture and distill what it meant to be a child. How those golden summers seemed to last forever, how the chill of an October Halloween night feels on your face, the hopes and dreams of childhood that are largely forgotten once we’re adults.

    Yes, he wrote speculative fiction, but even within those stories his atmospheric description of setting had a way of reaching inside me and getting me emotionally involved. It also made me long to be able to write stories just like that. I’d already decided I wanted to be a writer, but if I hadn’t settled on speculative fiction as my chosen genre, I certainly did after reading Ray Bradbury.

    A few years later, I had the opportunity to hear Bradbury speak at the community college I was attending. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I remember being enthralled. I also seem to recall going up afterwards and asking him a question. But what the question was or what he might have answered are lost in the mists of time.

    I want to pick up his books again. Maybe there are a few on my bookshelves that survived the 40 years since I first acquired them. If not, there’s always the library (they’re having a Friends of the Library sale this weekend) or the local bookstore. I’ll have to find his books in paper because Bradbury only agreed to digitizing one book (Fahrenheit 451) before he died. But reading Ray Bradbury via a paper book, the way I did that endless summer of 1970, seems exactly the proper way to revisit the master.

     

  • Happy Birthday, Dad

    Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 86 today. He died of Alzheimer’s nearly 5 months ago on January 9th. I’d like to share his eulogy today as a way to remember him.

    Great men don’t always become president, or build tall buildings, or run corporations. Sometimes greatness comes from a man’s kindness, his generosity, his good heart. Sam Stier was that kind of man.

    Sam was a loving husband of Barbara, father to four daughters and stepfather to one son, grandfather to nine grandchildren, great-grandfather to five great-grandchildren. He was also a friend to everyone he met. That last is no exaggeration—everyone who met him came to love him.

    Sam was born in Los Angeles, California, June 4th, 1926, the oldest of Harry and Rose Stier’s three sons. Sam was just 10 years old when his mother died of tuberculosis. Before she left for the hospital that last time, she took her oldest son aside and told him, “Sam, be a good boy.” He took those words to heart after she died, watching over his two younger brothers, Irwin and Arnold, while their dad worked as a long-haul trucker.

    When World War II broke out in 1941, Sam was too young to enlist, but felt a sense of duty to fight for his country. When he turned 16, he tried to persuade his father to sign the papers allowing him to enlist in the Navy. His father refused. Sam asked again when he was 17. This time his father relented. Sam served in the Navy from 1943 through 1946, mostly in the South Pacific.

    One of his first jobs out of the Navy was as a TV repairman. He loved working with his hands and he loved electronics and figuring out how things worked. He was always thinking of better ways to do something, even when the “better way” took longer than the other way. In the case of his job repairing TVs, Sam just wanted to fix the TV right there at the customer’s house. Sam’s boss wanted those TVs brought into the shop so he could charge a higher price for repairing it. Sam was far too honest a man to go along with his boss’s scheme, so he quit.

    Not long after, Sam started working at Space Technology Laboratories, which later became TRW. As a spacecraft technician, Sam helped build many a communications satellite. He traveled to Cocoa Beach, Florida numerous times to help with the launches. He enjoyed those trips to the East Coast, but at the same time hated leaving his family.

    Over the years, he enjoyed a wide variety of activities. He was an avid skier and loved tinkering with cars. In the ‘70s he bought an Alfa Romeo, fixed it up, and raced it at the track in Gardena, California. He was a voracious reader, but also enjoyed outdoor sports like hiking and whitewater rafting. In later life, he took up woodworking, and did much of the work remodeling his home in Pollock Pines.

    And throughout his life, Sam was an amazing father. He supported his four daughters in everything they did. He always let them know he loved them and how proud he was of them. He taught his daughters by example. They learned to be kind from his kindness. They grew to be generous through witnessing so many acts of Sam’s generosity. They became responsible adults because he took responsibility for his actions. Everything Sam gave his daughters, they passed down to their own children, raising another generation of loving, generous people who live by their grandfather’s example.

    For many people afflicted with Alzheimer’s as Sam was, their personalities change. They become unhappy, sad, or angry. But Sam’s spirit was so strong that despite the theft of his memories by the disease, his basic nature never changed. He was just as kind, just as generous and upbeat throughout his illness as he’d always been. He charmed the staff at his care home, and they grew to love him as their own “Papa Sam.” And although it was difficult for his family to see Sam fade, to have him move farther and farther away from them with time, it was a great blessing that he never lost his loving nature.

    I love you, Dad. Still missing you.

  • On the Back of a Winged Horse

    All through grade school, I had one best friend–Suzy. We were in the same class from kindergarten through 6th grade. The summer before 7th grade, I moved with my mom and two older sisters to the San Bernardino mountains about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. Suzy and I kept in touch via letters and would get together when I’d go back to L.A. to see my dad or grandma.

    We were pretty much glued at the hip during elementary school. We’d hang out at her house or mine (they were about a block away from each other), stroll around the corner to the house where Carl, Brian, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys lived just to stare at it, or go to the little neighborhood store for wax lips and candy cigarettes. Sometimes we’d head over to the school that was nearer to her house (our school was nearer to mine) and sneak under the fence to play in the playground. It’s a little hard to see, but at left is a particularly flattering picture (ahem, not) of me with my sweatshirt snagged on the fence while I’m trying to shimmy through.

    One thing we definitely had in common was a love of books and stories. We hung out in the school library so much that the librarian fell in love with us. She liked us so much she took me and Suzy to Marineland over in Palos Verdes, a fabulous (but now defunct) aquarium/marine life exhibit on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

    And Suzy and I loved to make up stories. I remember sitting in Suzy’s garage one time while she created and told a story that involved us flying around on winged horses, traveling around the clouds (they were solid so we could walk on them). Another friend of ours, Janet, was also featured in the story with us. But at some point, Janet fell off her winged horse and was killed. We had nothing against Janet; that was just the way the story went.

    Of course when we got to school the next day and Janet was absent, we were a little freaked out. Luckily, it wasn’t our fictional death that did her in. She was just sick for the day.

    When I moved to the Lake Arrowhead area for those four years, I did make a new friend (Virginia), but I kept in touch with Suzy. I hadn’t realized how many letters I wrote to her until a few years ago she sent me a cool spiral-bound book filled with old photographs (like the ones above) and several of my letters. The one at left is pretty typical. I loved playing with words even then (a cackle of witches, a waddle of ducks).

    Suzy attended my wedding 30+ years ago, then we lost touch for a long time. I think it was my mom’s death that reconnected us (which is when she sent the book). Then with the miracle that is Facebook, we’re at least virtually back in each other’s lives. I keep hoping that one of my trips to L.A. we’ll be able to meet IRL.

    Meanwhile, I’ll just unreel the memories from time to time and keep that winged horse handy.